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Introduction to Screwball Comedies

Laughter can be both healing and liberating,
a fact proven by the popularity of screwball
comedy after it emerged as a new American
art form in movies of the 1930s and early '40s,
when the country was enduring the Great
Depression and bracing itself for World War II.
TCM focuses on this zany and beloved genre
as we continue our Friday Night Spotlight
franchise. Each Friday evening in November,
talented comedy star Matthew Broderick
presents three classic screwball comedies,
featuring traditional Battle of the Sexes
storylines and starring some of the genre's
greatest practitioners.

The king of screwball has to be Cary Grant,
who matches wits with Irene Dunne in both
The Awful Truth (1937) and My Favorite Wife
(1940), Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby
(1938) and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday
(1940). Carole Lombard delights opposite John
Barrymore in Twentieth Century (1934) and
William Powell in My Man Godfrey (1936), while
Claudette Colbert sparkles opposite Clark
Gable in It Happened One Night (1934) and Joel
McCrea in The Palm Beach Story (1942).
Barbara Stanwyck, usually thought of as a
dramatic actress, showed off her screwball
smarts in two 1941 films, dazzling Henry Fonda
in The Lady Eve and Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire.